Ex-Cognotec Sales Managers Join SCS To Help Launch E-Gate Trading Apps

LONDON--Pat Dolan, formerly global head of sales at Cognotec, and Robert Ramsden-Board, formerly sales manager at Cognotec, have joined Strategic Communications Systems Ltd (SCS) in London as managing director and sales director, respectively.

Dolan, who has been consulting for SCS since he left Cognotec early this year, joined SCS full-time effective May 4. Ramsden-Board joined on February 1 after leaving Cognotec late last year.

SCS, based in Surrey, England with offices in the City of London and Kuwait, designed the E-Gate E-commerce solution as a "multiple transactional paradigm", says Dolan. E-Gate is intended to trade instruments in any asset class, from trader-to-trader, trader-to-corporate, branch-to-corporate and vice-versa. E-Gate also delivers real-time market information to the desktop using a variety of networks, including the Internet.

E-Gate is designed to offer a quickly-installed, value-for-money system for banks to use in trading with their customers, says Dolan, adding that, in most cases, SCS can install E-Gate in less than four weeks.

Banks can use E-Gate to build its own marketing tools, such as customized data display, in order to appeal to customers. E-Gate can be delivered via the Internet, a company's intra- or extranet, its local area network (LAN) and via TCP/IP or user datagram protocol (UDP). E-Gate has its own guaranteed delivery protocol using UDP, which is intended to allow for speedy messaging, says Ramsden-Board.

E-Gate is a modular service and is priced so that it can be sold remotely over the Web, says Dolan. E-Gate is the combined collection of communications, market data and desktop display.

Terminal applications include: Autogate, for automatic pricing and execution; Broadgate, its broadcast spread engine; Chatgate, a talk facility; Marketgate, real-time information and analysis distribution; Tradegate, electronic template trading; Limitgate, limit order and order management; and Watergate, credit line and deal flow.

One bank is considering using E-Gate to replace its market data display terminals in the front office, using E-Gate's page, record and news producers--E-Gate's version of publish and subscribe--to handle information from the vendors over the Internet. However, E-Gate "is not trying to become a platform", says Dolan. Its main competitor is Reuters, with trading solutions such as its automatic FX transaction service, Dealweb, and Dealwatch, its limit order and order management system, as well as TIB/Mercury, says Dolan.